June 7, 2018 / admin / 0 Comments
FlightSimExpo 2018, PMDG’s “Secret” Project Announcement and More Ramblings from a sleepless night is the topic of this article from GrizzlyBearSims. Ladies, Gentlemen and children of all ages….as I’ve often mentioned during my YouTube videos…I occasionally suffer from bouts of insomnia. I generally fall asleep quite easily, then wake up a few hours later with thoughts and ramblings knocking around in my head. Tonight I went to bed around my normal time feeling exhausted from work to only wake up in the middle of the night with the desire to write.
FlightSimExpo 2018
This coming weekend 9-10 June, Flight Simulation enthusiasts and AvGeeks from around the world will gather at the Flamingo in beautiful Las Vegas, Nevada for North America’s newest flight simulation and aviation conference, FlightSimExpo 2018. Created by simmers and developers, FlightSimExpo is being advertised as “the only community-created and driven flight simulation conference in North America”.
This thing is going to be huge and I can certainly understand why they picked Sin City to host the first event of its kind. The sponsor list reads like a who’s who of all the major players from the world of flight simulation. With Orbx being listed at the top of the pyramid and just about everyone else I’ve ever heard of in my long history with this hobby is involved. All the big name YouTube/Twitch personalities will also be in attendance. I certainly wish my travel schedule would have permitted me the opportunity to attend. But there’s always next year!
Unfortunately, all available tickets have been sold for the event so we’ll just have to sit back and wait for others attending the event to begin spreading all the news and joy with the rest of us on the interwebz. I’ll be tuned into all the regular FS news channels and will share any major news along with my opinion right here on GrizzlyBearSims.com.
PMDG’s “Secret” Project
At some point over the weekend, we’ll finally know what PMDG’s “Secret” Project is all about. Speculation has pretty much run amuck the past few weeks as to what this “secret” project could be. Some are saying it’s a new aircraft model and others seem to think it could actually be a brand new sim platform. It appears whatever this “Secret” Project is, it’s been in the works since 2008. I have some thoughts and ideas on what this “secret” project could be and most likely what it will not be which I’ll discuss in the next few paragraphs.
First, this isn’t the first time PMDG has identified a new upcoming project using the term “Secret”. So just because the hype leading up to FSExpo2018 is convincing everyone this could be the next best thing since the old pocket on a shirt, it may not be that big. But as I said, speculation is running wild and before I run through the potential list, let’s talk about the history of PMDG first.
Firstly, PMDG is an acronym of Precision Manuals Design Group and was founded by Robert S. Randazzo. PMDG got its start by producing detailed flight manuals (hence the name) for the Microsoft Flight Simulator Boeing 747 and 757 , but soon moved into the development of freeware and later quality payware aircraft models. Today PMDG develops some of the finest study level aircraft for the Microsoft FSX, FSX Steam Edition, Lockheed Martin’s Prepar3D and X-Plane simulation platforms.
Their current list of supported aircraft models include Boeing 737-800/900 (-600/-700 expansion pack), Boeing 777-200LR/F (-300ER expansion pack), Boeing 747-400 Queen of The Skies II and the Douglas DC-6. It should be noted the Douglas DC-6 was the first aircraft developed by PMDG for the X-Plane platform. Also of note, the Jetstream 4100 is available for FSX only and their MD-11 (FSX only) was officially retired. According to public information, PMDG is currently developing the Jetstream 4100 for P3D and the Boeing 747-8i/F expansion for both FSX and Prepar3D.
As I mentioned, speculation as to exactly what the “Secret” project for 2018 has been discussed in all corners of the internet. Also, let’s keep in mind that we have been told this “Secret” project has been in the works since 2008. 10 Years, a decade. Of course, just because something has been in development for 10 years, doesn’t mean it’s been actively worked on all this time. After all, PMDG only has 8 employees according to Wikipedia. A quick Google search has uncovered many of the possible scenarios which I’ll list below with a few comments/opinions from yours truly…this list will start with the most bizarre and eventually work our way into perhaps the most likely scenario. At least from my viewpoint…here goes.
PMDG will make us pay for all our aircraft one more time. This one ranks highest on the most bizarre, but if you are unfamiliar with flight sim and especially PMDG, allow me to bring up up to speed. As I’ve discussed a few times, the one factor in my decision to embrace P3D is the fact that a large majority of the add-ons I purchased during the time of FSX have been re-developed to function in P3D. Most importantly, many of these have been re-developed to work in P3D v4 (64 bit). Of all the add-ons I own (and I own a lot), most have been made available at no additional cost. Meaning, some sceneries I purchased to use with FSX (sometime after 2006) have been redeveloped to work in P3D v4, with installers made available some 12 years later and at no additional cost. While this list consists mainly of scenery add-ons, a few of my favorite aircraft have also been made available for P3D v4 at no extra cost. But when P3D came onto the scene, PMDG made the decision any aircraft you had previously purchased for FSX would need to be re-purchased for P3D. While we were all down on our knees after that punch to the gut, PMDG then kicked us again and said, AT FULL PRICE! Yes, it was a hard pill to swallow especially knowing that PMDG didn’t really have to completely rewrite every line of code with these aircraft. But considering they provide the very best study level Boeing models available for P3D, we all opened out wallets, whipped out the credit cards and said…”Take Our Money”. But fear not….I don’t believe PMDG will be announcing we must all re-purchase our favorite aircraft AGAIN for P3D (at least not at this time).
PMDG will develop an Airbus aircraft, specifically the Airbus A380. As PMDG have established themselves primarily as a Boeing shop, I’m not sure I see this as an option. Another small piece of information I’ve found on the internet, it appears Randazzo very much dislikes Airbus. He’s often used the line “If it ain’t Boeing, I ain’t going”. Of course, a study level Airbus A380 would certainly be a money maker and I’ve known folks who would sell their soul just to make a buck. The other factor that I believe doesn’t make sense for the A380 to be the “Secret” project is there is already a study level Airbus A380 currently in development. But of course, this really doesn’t matter. In the grand scheme of things, the only thing that matters is who brings their version to market first. PMDG most certainly could have been working off and on over the past 10 years on the A380 and we would have never known it. In addition, IF they are working on an A380 it most likely release long before any other possible developers version.
PMDG will develop a new flight simulation platform. If you know a little history, this doesn’t sound too far fetched. We’ve known for a year or two that PMDG was involved in a conglomeration of well known flight sim developers who negotiated with Microsoft to acquire the rights to continue developing FSX as a flight sim platform. However, during the negotiation process, Dovetail Games flew in with a better plan and obviously deeper pockets and walked away with the rights. This of course led to the FSX Steam Edition, Dovetail Games Flight School and Dovetail Games Flight Sim World. Only FSX Steam Edition has survived and you can read my article titled “And then there were two…” for more info on the demise of FSW. To continue with this thought, we need to look at the facts. We’ve been told by PMDG that this “Secret” project has been in the making since 2008. Microsoft had been releasing versions of their popular flight simulator every 2-3 years with FS2000 releasing in 1999, FS2002 in 2001, FS2004 (FS9) in 2003 and FSX in 2006. After the release of FSX in 2006, the flight sim community (best I can remember) just believed that FS11 would be the next in the franchise and life was good. Even in 2008, I doubt anyone felt any turbulence approaching. In 2009, it was reported that development behind the MSFS product was being heavily affected by Microsoft’s ongoing job cuts and there were rumors the entire dev team would be laid off. Soon after, we learned the news about the ACES team being laid off and speculation began to build on exactly what the future was for the Microsoft Flight Simulator franchise. The point I’m getting at here is in 2008, PMDG was still a relatively small company. I’m really not sure they would have had the need or desire to think one day they would build their own flight simulator platform. The whole Dovetail scenario didn’t occur until 2014. As far as this scenario goes, I feel it’s more likely that PMDG (and that conglomeration previously mentioned) have some how negotiated with Dovetail Games to take over where they left off with FSW. Or perhaps negotiated with Lockheed Martin to distribute Prepar3D for entertainment purposes. Or none of these scenarios at all.
Here are my own ideas as to what the “secret” project actually is….Once again, let’s open our history books to the year 2008. After all, this seems to be some key date in PMDG’s history.
PMDG will release the McDonnell Douglas MD-11 for P3D v4. Now this would certainly be a crowd pleaser and many, many credit cards would gladly be whipped out to pay for this. PMDG actually released the MD-11 in 2008 for both FS9 and FSX. At that time, the only other wide body aircraft available from PMDG was the 747-400 (version 2) for FSX. The MD-11 was loved by many and for those still running the boxed version of FSX, it’s still flying the virtual skies hauling passengers and freight all around the world. As of two years ago, the worldwide fleet of MD-11s totaled 123 with Fedex operating 57. With PMDG’s decision to retire the MD-11, it’s left a big void in the virtual aviation hobby.
PMDG will release either a Boeing 757 or 767 for P3D v4. Another absolutely WIDE void in the virtual aviation hobby was created when the wonderful Level-D Boeing 767 was officially retired. I owned the Level-D 767 for FSX and just before PMDG released the 777, the 767 was my favorite aircraft to fly. In the real world, the Boeing 767 continues to fly the skies in vast numbers with over 700 still in service as both passenger and cargo operations. Even after the 767 is retired from passenger service, it will still proudly fly the skies as cargo aircraft. As for the 757, rumors about rumors have long existed that Level-D would eventually make a 757. The excitement was quite high for this news as the community had been wanting a study level version of the Boeing 757 for a long time. Even today, with both QualityWings having a 757 for FSX (and P3D v2/v3) and CaptainSim offering a 757 for P3D v4, the community still lacks that study level quality version. In the real world, 738 Boeing 757’s are still in service with Delta, Fedex and United Airlines having the largest fleet still flying today.
Something YUGE? Again, I have been using Google to parse as much info as I possibly can regarding this “Secret” project PMDG is announcing this weekend. In Jan. 2017, Robert S. Randazzo posted a lengthy discussion topic regarding status updates on somethings PMDG had been working on. This posting discusses many things including PMDG RainMaker, 747-8, 777, NG3 (not to be confused with NGX) and the Jetstream 4100 (J41). Down many paragraphs he mentions “We originally thought the J41 would release in late summer and showcase this new effect (PMDG RainMaker), but product development hit some snags and is still in holding since we moved development resources over to a major (massive…YUGE, even!) project that we haven’t announced yet”. He further mentions that we won’t see the “PMDG RainMaker” effects until the 747-8 expansion. So….something YUGE! Is this code for something? I’m not sure, but elsewhere on the interwebz I found a discussion regarding speculation that PMDG might have been working on the Boeing 747-200. How do I connect “YUGE” to the B742? G-HUGE is a registration number for a British Caledonian Airways Boeing 747-200. Yes, I agree…this is a stretch of the old imagination. But I’m starting to become delirious from lack of sleep now.
If I were a betting man and of course this announcement will take place on Saturday, 9 June in Sin City (Las Vegas), so place those bets now….I would say the most likely scenario will be either the MD-11 or 767/757 option. Either (or all) would be a really big deal in the flight sim community. Either (or all) would fill a really “YUGE” void in the flight sim community and would just strengthen the Boeing offerings PMDG already has in their portfolio. But we’ll just have to wait until Saturday to learn what new thing we can expect from PMDG.
A Few More Ramblings
I’m starting to drift off to sleep now and need to jot down a few more thoughts as I can’t be guaranteed to remember them when I wake up later. A few years ago I wrote about a similar flight simulation conference called FlightSimCon. While FlightSimExpo (which is what the majority of this blog posting is about) claims to be “the only community-created and driven flight simulation conference in North America”, I suppose there has been a lot of confusion in recent weeks about these two conferences. Anyway, in the past…FlightSimCon was held in the New England Air Museum in Windsor Locks, CT (Bradley International Airport KBDL). While I believe attendance was always good, it was a difficult location to get to for the majority of the attendees. The organizers of FlightSimCon for the 2018 event have since changed the location to the Hyatt Regency Hotel in downtown Dallas, Texas. However, this event falls two weeks AFTER FlightSimExpo and appears not to have as many sponsors/exhibitors. While I understand these are two different conferences, operated by two different groups…the planning could have been better. The flight simulation community is rather small in comparison to other gaming communities and I personally don’t believe two events of this kind can survive especially when the are scheduled two weeks apart. The majority of the excitement certainly seems to be around the FlightSimExpo Vegas event as the list of sponsors/exhibitors consists of all the major players.
Finally, I really hope you enjoyed the first installment or Leg 1 of my “around the world” WorldFlight 2018 tour which released here on my blog site on Wednesday. Look for Leg 2 on Saturday morning and my hope is to be able to deliver at least one leg each week and occasionally some weeks could have two legs.
I’m sorry this has been a lengthy/wordy article. Yes, there’s a lot of info to digest and some of it, or perhaps none of it will come to fruition. That’s OK with me, it’s been a fun walk down memory lane. If by some freak chance something I’ve listed here does happen, then I can only thank the Flight Sim gods for waking me and placing the thoughts in my tiny brain.
Until next time….As Wesley Snipes would say…..
Jerry
P.S. Yea…I also enjoy aviation movies.
For legal disclosure, the Wesley Snipes (Passenger 57) GIF is copyright of whomever created it and to the producers/directors and Mr. Wesley (tax man) Snipes himself.
June 6, 2018 / admin / 0 Comments
Back in the day, long before the GBS YouTube channel…I would blog about my flight sim adventures. It’s really why I started this blog site over 10 years ago. As I began planning the WorldFlight 2018 GBS Tour, I spent a few days kicking around whether I would record any of these flights for YouTube, stream on YT and/or Twitch or just blog about them. I decided to return to my roots of just simply blogging about these adventures. I know as a civilization we’ve somewhat moved away from reading about things. But I figure there may still be a few folks who frequent my blog from years ago that might enjoy this. So with out further adieu, let’s begin.
Just to familiarize yourself with our tour map. I’ll be posting an updated image of this map as we complete the legs of the tour.
I made my way from Denver, Colorado to Sydney, Australia and allowed myself some time to rest from the jetlag of a long, cross the pacific flight. I’ve been hired to operate a world tour, shuttling lucky passengers who have all gathered in Sydney on a luxurious 46 leg, 25+ country world tour. Money appears to be absolutely no object to these people as they certainly seem to have no cares in the world. For the sake of sheer adventure, we will be changing aircraft frequently as we make our way around the globe. Thankfully, as their captain…I’m qualified to operate a variety of Boeing and Airbus aircraft. I’ve partnered with many global airlines to utilize their aircraft for the tour. Funnily enough, they welcome this as we’ll be moving aircraft from one airport to the other on their behalf.
Leg 1 of our world tour kicks off on an early, rainy fall morning in Sydney. Our tour group is a mishmash of all nationalities which is all part of the plan. Think of it as a self-guided tour group. Meaning we have passengers who are familiar with our tour stops and they will spend time sharing information with each other along the tour. Pretty cool concept if you ask me. Plus what better way to check out all the wonderful aspects of these cities, the food, the nightlife etc.
History of City
Cairns was founded in 1876 and named after William Wellington Cairns, Governor of Queensland from 1875 to 1877. It was formed to serve miners heading for the Hodgkinson River Goldfield. Cairns is located on the east coast of far north Queensland. The city is the 5th most populous in Queensland and ranks 14th overall in Australia. Cairns is a popular tourist destination because of its tropical climate and access to the Great Barrier Reef, which is one of the seven natural wonders of the world.
History of Country
As for Australia, officially named the “Commonwealth of Australia” which is a sovereign country comprising the mainland of the Australian continent, the island of Tasmania and numerous smaller islands. It is the largest country in Oceania and the world’s sixth-largest country by total area. Neighboring countries include Papua New Guinea, Indonesia and East Timor. Our tour will actually visit both Indonesia in just a few legs and PNG towards the end as we make our way back to Sydney.
History of Airport
The Cairns airport is an international classification airport. Its early history goes back to 1928 when a pilot named Tom McDonald started flying his de Havilland Gipsy Moth off a sand ridge near the present airport. He could only land and take off between high tides. During one emergency, Tom was forced to take off from beer barrels.
Today, the airport has direct flights to 18 international and 30 domestic destinations and many general aviation flights including a number of helicopter operators. Flights are operated to all major Australian cities and tourist destinations, regional communities in Far North Queensland and a number of international destinations in the Asia-Pac region with connections all over the world.
The Cairns airport has one runway measuring 10,354 feet (3,156 meters) in length. The airport you’ll see is a payware add-on airport by Orbx.
History of Airline
Today we are flying for Qantas. Qantas is the flag carrier of Australia and its largest airline by fleet size, international flights and international destinations. It is the third oldest airline in the world, after KLM and Avianca. Qantas was founded in November 1920, it began international passenger flights in May 1935. The name Qantas is actually an acronym for its original name of “Queensland and Northern Territory Aerial Services. Qantas is nicknamed “The Flying Kangaroo”.
The aircraft we’re flying today is the Boeing 737-800. Qantas currently has 70 of these aircraft in service today which clearly makes it their workhorse aircraft.
The flight today is an actual real-world flight which Qantas operates between Sydney and Cairns in the Boeing 737-800.
Flight Briefing
QFA1066
YSSY – YBCS
Planned Fuel – 11110kg
Planned Altitude – 36,000
Distance – 1062
Flight Time – 2 hrs 55 mins
Route: DEENA7 RIC H76 NBR H105 HACHI Q165 VOMPA Q499 FISHY TOTY4W
Flight Journal
It’s June 2nd, it’s early, it’s wet and it’s cool in Sydney this morning. The ground crew is busy getting our Boeing 737-800 ready to go. Our tour group will soon be arriving by bus. The Sydney airport have granted us permission to board from the tarmac.
Our excited travelers have arrived and boarded the aircraft. Along with luggage and extra cargo, we’ve been granted permission to push, start and taxi to the active runway.
Line up and wait for 16R
Rotate
Note the visual immersion effects around the fan and across the wing as we climb out via the DEENA7 STAR.
Above the clouds as we climb to FL360 (36,000 feet).
Simply beautiful
Time to descend via the TOTY4W arrival.
Making our right turn to join the runway 15 approach.
Gear down, flaps 40
Runway in sight
First leg is in the books. Our tour passengers and their baggage are being offloaded to enjoy their brief say in Cairns, Australia.
Simulator Specifics
Prepar3d v4.2
ActiveSky Weather Engine
ActiveSky Cloud Art
Envtex & Envshade
PMDG 737-800 (Qantas livery)
Orbx Global Texture
Orbx Australia
Orbx Cairns Airport
VATSIM
Route Planning Tools
AivlaSoft PFPX
Navigraph Charts Desktop
FlightAware
FlightRadar24
SkyVector
Google Maps
Computer Hardware Specs
Thank you for taking the time to read this report. Our tourists will spend a little time visiting the sites around Cairns and we’ll be departing soon for Broome.
Until next time…
Happy Flying!
Jerry
June 3, 2018 / admin / 2 Comments
I made a decision a few years ago not to attempt to become a “Breaking News” blog site. I just don’t have time and I’m just one guy. Most of the flight sim related content I write about either has to do with my own involvement in the hobby or news/information about products I own and use in my sim. Sometimes I comment on newsworthy items within my writings as I often have opinions regarding these things. After all, my experience in this hobby goes back a long, long time. The title of this writing is called “FSLabs Making News – Once Again”.
If you search my blog site using FSLabs, you’ll find two articles. You can read article one here, and article two here if you desire. In each of these articles I more or less refer to the news from earlier in the year where FS Labs got caught inserting malware into their Airbus A320 aircraft. This action according to FS Labs was in an effort to catch would be software pirates.
Before I continue any further, allow me just to state that I’m well aware software piracy runs amuck not only in the flight sim community, not only in the gaming community…but is an issue across the board for all software developers. While more needs to be done to stop this behavior and bring those who commit these crimes to justice, there is a right way and a wrong way to go about this. The steps FS Labs initially took was very much the wrong way.
About FSLabs
FlightSimLabs (FSLabs for short) is an payware, add-on aircraft developer who has been around for a few years. One of their first products was the Concorde-X. The Concorde-X was developed for Microsoft FSX and was quite popular. Those who have been around for a while may remember the Concorde was a featured, default aircraft in FS9, but removed in FSX. Since the Concorde-X product, FSLabs have been working on developing near study level replicas of the Airbus A320 and A319 aircraft. It’s their A320 product which first got FSLabs into a bit of hot water with the FS Community.
The Malware Debacle
As I mentioned earlier, FSLabs first ruffled some feathers in the FS Community back in the February 2018 timeframe. The story was so big that even bloggers, writers who would never even think to write about flight sim news covered it. Here’s one of those articles. In a nutshell, FSLabs wrote a bit of code which installed a “Chrome Password Dump” which was hidden inside the A320 installer. This bit of malware could extract users personal information which is stored within the Chrome browser including passwords and billing information.
The founder of FSLabs (Lefteris Kalamaras) did apologize for the including such intrusive code in the A320 download and stated “I want to reiterate and reaffirm that we as a company and as flight simmers would never do anything to knowingly violate the trust that you have placed in us by not only buying our products but supporting them and FlightSimLabs”. He further stated “While the majority of our customers understand that the fight against piracy is a difficult and ongoing battle that sometimes requires drastic measures, we realize that a few of you were uncomfortable with this particular method which might be considered a bit heavy handed on our part.”
My Opinion Thus Far
As many others have pointed out in various articles and blog postings, the action taken by FSLabs and its founder Lefteris Kalamaras is disturbing, highly unethical and while I’m not a lawyer, I would even think this action borders on illegal behavior. While much of the flight sim community compares FSLabs and their A320 to the likes of PMDG and their lineup of Boeing study level aircraft, with the right apologies and follow-thru, I personally could have considered giving them a second chance. After all, forgiveness right? But as the weeks and months from the initial news regarding the malware unfolded, it has once again thrust FSLabs into the news and once again it appears they are not doing the things they need to do to win trust within the community.
PR Debacle
One might think if FSLabs were sincere in their apologies they would just ensure everything they did going forward was 100% positive within the flight sim community. They would keep their heads down, develop the finest Airbus products available and provide awesome support to the community. Then hope, pray and beg for the forgiveness from the community. But no…in recent days two additional little bugbears have popped up which have further ruffled feathers in the community.
The first installment of how bad can you run a flight sim add-on company was how FSLabs and their founder have been threatening some folks over in the Reddit community and perhaps other bloggers/writers. The second major mess-up appears to be in how their A320 installer is writing a cmdhost.exe file under the Windows system32\ and SysWOW64 directories.
While I’m not an application developer, I do understand enough about the Windows operating system to know that these directories are no place for third party installers to write anything to. From previously published articles it appears this action was a necessary part of its eSellerate infrastructure and provides communications between the eSellerate servers and the FSLabs installed product in an activation interface scenario.
Final Thoughts on this matter
Again, it’s not my intent to report news. I would much rather spend my time flying and writing about all the wonderful things taking place in the flight sim community. However, as I often receive emails asking for assistance and advice related to various subjects in the hobby, I felt I wanted to at the very least share my thoughts on all this. The very sad part of this entire story is FSLabs have done a remarkable job (from all that I’ve heard) on developing a near study level Airbus A320. I actually would have loved to own this product, but as I previously stated, I will NEVER purchase anything from FlightSimLabs. Of course, I don’t believe my reluctance in purchasing their products will bankrupt them. However, while I will not outright say you should avoid purchasing their products, I will just encourage you to conduct your own research and just be very careful if you do decide to purchase any FSLabs product.
Are you an Airbus Fan?
I’ve got to admit that my passion for tubeliners isn’t in the Airbus camp. I’m a Boeing guy. But while I may prefer Boeing to Airbus, I do enjoy from time to time flying the smaller Airbus A318/A319 & the A320/A321 aircraft variants as this opens up a totally new and different world to virtual aviation. It allows me to simulate airline operations for the likes of Frontier, EasyJet and many others who are 100% operating Airbus aircraft. Or it allows me to simulate the Airbus operations for American and British Airways who both operate a mix of Boeing and Airbus aircraft within their fleet. The wait will soon be over as I mentioned a few weeks ago, the Aerosoft A318/A319 & A320/A321 series of aircraft will be released for Prepar3D v4. I owned these for FSX and earlier versions of P3D and have missed them in P3D v4. Aerosoft is a software developer we can trust to not only develop and support a quality aircraft simulation product but do it without playing silly buggers with us in the process. The Aerosoft Airbus series is scheduled to release on 26 June and once I make my purchase, download and install…you can expect a full review here on my blog. Of course, as it’s been over a year since I’ve operated an Airbus aircraft, I’ll need some time to come up to speed on them. But hopefully it’s just like riding a bike.
As always, thanks for reading. Look for my blog report from the first leg of my WorldFlight GBS 2018 tour to drop on Wednesday. It was a fun flight from Sydney to Cairns and as I type this, I’m actually flying leg 2 from Cairns over to the western corner of Australia and the city of Broome. I hope you’ll return to Planes, Trains and Automobiles (and Farming too) to catch up on all the action.
Happy Simming!
Jerry
June 2, 2018 / admin / 0 Comments
The organizers of WorldFlight, have prepared the 2018 version of their world tour to raise money for various charities around the world. Each November, teams from around the globe participate in this annual week long event. Many of these same teams, stream their flights on Twitch & YouTube from one of many full-sized flight simulators around the world which have been setup.
Over my 35+ year history with computer based flight simulation, I’ve circumnavigated the globe many times and in many different aircraft. In 2010, I embarked on an “Around the World” journey in a single engine Mooney Bravo which consisted of 75 individual flight legs, spread out over approx. 45 days. The total trip mileage was 35,816 nm and consisted of 201.5 flight hours. If you are interested, you can view my trip log here.
I’ve flown the Worldflight tour (on my own) many times. Last year (2017) I completed it in the PMDG Boeing 737-800. As it was just a “for fun” flight, I didn’t keep a flight log but it was a lot of fun just the same. For 2018, I’m going to attempt to do a better job with keeping a flight log, showcasing on my blog site. Just like the old days!
As it would be impossible for a single pilot to fly the complete route, during the actual even timeline…I’m planning to start my journey in early to mid June. The general purpose of doing this is to help raise awareness for the official event in November and expose as many of my viewers to this awesome charity event.
Unlike last year where I used the same aircraft type to complete the tour, this year I’ll use a variety of aircraft from my virtual hangar including both Boeing and Airbus aircraft. The Boeing types will include 737, 747, 777 and 787. Airbus will be a A319, A320 and A321 variants. In addition, you can expect to see a variety of airline liveries throughout the journey. As the tour begins in Sydney, Australia…I’ll kick the tour off with Qantas, Jetstar and Virgin Australia.
In some (perhaps most) instances, the two airports which make up each leg may not have real-world flights connecting them to each other. In cases like this, I’ll use my own imagination to determine what airline would make the most sense to operate and which aircraft type. A lot of the decisions driving this will be the availability of aircraft liveries. But I’ll strive to do my best to keep a variety throughout the journey.
The same applies for airport scenery. While I own a lot of different airport sceneries, I don’t own all the airports we’ll be visiting during this tour. If I can find quality freeware airports that won’t break my sim or cause issues, I’ll consider using them. But in some cases, default scenery will just have to be used.
The 2018 WorldFlight Tour begins in Sydney, Australia and travels a westerly direction (see map below). This tour will consist of 46 legs, covering an approx. 36,153 nm while visiting over 25 different countries.
I’m really not sure how long it will take me to complete this tour. Perhaps I’ll try to wrap the last few flight legs around the same time as the actual event is taking place. It might be fun to fly the last leg or two on VATSIM at the same time the actual event is taking place. But only time will tell if this will be possible. You can follow along with my progress visiting my blog site and the 2018 WorldFlight Page I’ve setup.
Thanks for reading and bon voyage.
Jerry
